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Case
Name: M.C. v. Voluntown Bd. of Educ., 226 F.3d 60 (2nd Cir. 2000),
decided September 12, 2000
REMAND: M.C. v. Voluntown Bd. of Educ., 2000 Lexis 18004 (D. Conn.
2000), decided October 30, 2000
This is a second circuit court of appeals case that deals with the
issue of whether a student who is classified as disabled pursuant
to the special education act ("IDEA") is entitled to reimbursement
for the costs of private school tuition and counseling undertaken
without the consent of the local school district. The district court
had previously allowed reimbursement for both of those services.
M.C., a seventeen-year-old boy, was diagnosed with a central auditory
processing disorder, with difficulty in written expression and processing
information (especially verbal) and classified as learning disabled
under the IDEA criteria from the fourth grade. M.C.'s travails with
the Voluntown school district ("Voluntown") began in 1995, when
his parents asserted that M.C. was not receiving an appropriate
education due to his learning disability. The parents sought reimbursement
for M.C.'s placement at the Rectory School ("Rectory") for the 1997-98
school year - a placement taken with Voluntown's knowledge but without
a contractual agreement between Rectory and Voluntown, a prerequisite
mandated in the June 1997 PPT. The court found that although the
Rectory placement was appropriate for the 1996-97 school year, and
that M.C. made "remarkable progress" at Rectory, the placement for
1997-98 was not appropriate because Voluntown and Rectory
could not agree on a contract to govern the terms of the placement.
In looking at the appropriateness of the placement, the court rejected
the district court's analysis because it failed to determine whether
the school district had provided an IEP adequate to provide a free
appropriate public education ("FAPE") - having skipped directly
to an analysis of whether the private educational service obtained
was appropriate based on the child's needs. The court relied on
the two part test enumerated in School Comm. Town of Burlington
v. Dept, of Educ., 471 U.S. 359 (1985), and remanded the case back
to the district court for an analysis of whether Voluntown's potential
placements for the 1997-98 school year constituted FAPE under IDEA.
The court went on to chide the district court's reliance on Florence
Co. Sch. Dist. v. Carter, 510 U.S. 7 (1993) which provides guidance
for a private school placement analysis only when the answer
to Burlington's question one (was the IEP appropriate?) is negative.
The circuit court also rejected the reimbursement for private psychological
counseling on the ground that under IDEA, reimbursement is "barred
where parents unilaterally arrange for private educational services
without ever notifying the school board with their dissatisfaction
of the IEP." Here, the parents first mentioned the counseling eight
months after the counseling ended. Because it was not raised
for review as part of the IEP, parents were out of luck to seek
reimbursement after the fact.
ON REMAND, the district court "reluctantly" reversed its
prior judgment against Voluntown, agreeing that one of the placements
offered in the IEP crafted in June 1997 met the Burlington test,
though it was not as desirable as the one provided at Rectory. The
district court protested the circuit's interpretation of the law
(at p.5) given the "unusual facts" of the case, but reversed its
prior judgement nonetheless.
For full text of case from FindLaw, click
here.
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